The Looking Glass
by Ani-maniac494
Summary: Susan Pevensie hated mirrors. She hadn't always felt that way. But mirrors can be difficult to endure if someone doesn't like what's staring back at them. Set after Susan ceased to be a "friend of Narnia." One-shot.


Spoilers: No spoilers in this one.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Chronicles of Narnia, or even a wardrobe, though I almost wish I had one, if only to knock on the back of it.

A/N: I have enjoyed a number of stories that explore what happened to Susan after she was told that she would not be returning to Narnia, and I have always wanted to write one of my own. I was inspired by this one unexpectedly. While I have seen some stories involving Susan and mirrors before, I cannot claim to have read them all, and I have never seen one like this. If there is one out there that has any similarities to this one, please know that those similarities are entirely unintentional.

As always, I also thank my Lord Jesus Christ for his incredible mercy and grace and his many blessings. I would be utterly lost without him.

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**The Looking Glass**

Susan Pevensie hated mirrors.

She hadn't before, not until they came back from Nar-…from staying at the professor's house. But after that, every time she looked into a mirror, she found herself startled to see the image of a young girl staring back at her and not a gentle queen. Why that had bothered her so she couldn't say, since she had, of course, never really been a queen in the first place.

Her aversion to mirrors had only gotten worse when she had allowed herself to indulge in childish fantasies for a second - and final - time.

Mirrors, however, were rather practical, necessary things, and so she resolutely pushed her unease aside every time she looked into the mirror above her dressing table. (And if she sometimes lingered, it was only because she was particular about her appearance, and not because she was trying, once more, to imagine herself with a crown.)

As the years passed, it got easier to see what _was_ instead of what had never been (what could never be again), and eventually, the mirror began to reflect another kind of queen, one with rouge on her cheeks, red, painted lips, and powder on her skin.

It was a different sort of royalty that she could lay claim to now, a social royalty, but it was royalty nonetheless, and she couldn't help but revel in it, even if it meant that she spent a great deal more time looking into a mirror. A queen, after all, had to look the part.

It was funny, though - despite how closely she followed the latest fashions, she had never given much thought to the length of her hair. She had always worn it long, and she kept up with the trends by making use of elaborate updos. But as she grew older, when she looked in the mirror, she began to see a glimpse of the queen that she remembered - the _tall and gracious woman with black hair that fell almost to her feet _\- and it was disturbing enough that she knew something had to change.

She couldn't bear to see the specter of that queen every day. Not again.

So, as soon as she was able, she sat in the beautician's chair, watching impassively as a shower of severed, dark locks fell around her, and with every snip of the scissors, the image of that phantom queen grew a little fainter.

Peter's eyes had widened the next time he saw her, his brow creasing with something akin to pain.

"Susan-" he began.

But she didn't let him finish, already guessing what he planned to say.

"Relax, Peter. I like it this way. And besides, it's just hair."

It was, indeed, just hair, but she smiled when, not long after that, a number of the girls in her social circle appeared with new, shorter styles of their own. The changing fashions naturally had a part to play, but Susan had no doubt that at least a few of those girls had done it because they wished to emulate her.

She reveled in that too, reveled in the influence she had, in the envious stares that often followed her. Perhaps she did not have a castle, but she had her own circle of advisors - the girls who had nearly as much influence as she did - and though she might not have princes vying for her hand, she had more than her fair share of handsome admirers.

Her distaste for mirrors still lingered, but she had learned to ignore it, and really, most days, it wasn't all that difficult to put it out of her mind. (It was, after all, the least of many things that she had chosen to ignore.)

That had remained true until a cold day in 1949. (Had it been a cold day? She couldn't remember. If the sun had been shining then, she had been blind to it; in her mind's eye, she could never picture that day as anything other than dark and cold and bleak and bitter.)

Her brothers. Her sister. Her parents. Her cousin. The professor. Their friends.

Gone in one fell swoop.

And, as the weeks passed, and she worked to put her family's affairs in order, Susan found that, for the second time in her life, she did not recognize the woman whose reflection she saw in the mirror.

This woman was pale and solemn with dark circles around her eyes that no makeup could hide. This woman had oddly prominent cheekbones because there had been (and still were) days where she was barely able to force herself to eat, and her lips were chapped and thin.

This woman was not a queen of any sort.

This woman was lost. Alone.

Abandoned.

She had hated mirrors even more after that, and she took to covering hers. It was easier that way. Easier than seeing the reminder of what she had become. She kept the curtains around her windows closed too, not wanting to meet her reflection in the glass, and when she walked past the shop windows downtown, she was careful to ignore the ghostly silhouette that she could see out of the corner of her eye.

It was only one of many, many things she was ignoring by that point, but what did it matter?

There was no one left to chide her for it.

Years passed that way. Long, hard, lonely years.

It was only later, much later, on another lonely, desperate day, that the stone statue of a lion had beckoned her from its place in front of an old bookshop, and she'd reluctantly made her way inside that shop, pausing to run her hands over the spines of the books with titles she recognized.

She had frozen, though, when a particular book caught her eye.

A Bible.

How many times had she seen Peter, Ed, and Lucy with a Bible?

_I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name. _

Wasn't that what Edmund and Lucy had told her that Asl-...that _He_ had said? (_He_, naturally, was one of the many things she tried to ignore, though that was harder now, with his likeness just outside.)

Susan bit her lip and made her way around to all the shelves, lingering over every book she saw, nearly walking to the front counter with a few other volumes instead, but in the end, she had left the shop with her purchase, feeling unnerved but strangely lighter.

And so it was, after just a few weeks more, that she found herself putting away the drapes that covered the mirrors in her flat and pulling open the curtains.

Sunlight streamed through the windows and bounced off the uncovered glass, and Susan reveled in it, reveled in the way it made the world around her seem brighter, the colors in her room more vivid. The green of the plants by her window. The blue of the oriental rug on her floor. The red cover of the Bible now sitting on her bedside table.

The light was so beautiful that she couldn't imagine why she had put this day off as long as she had.

Except…that wasn't quite true, was it?

She had hesitated to take this final step because she had dreaded what she might see reflected back at her after so long.

But she had already faced far worse than her own silly fears, and so, drawing one last deep breath, she turned resolutely, walked over to her dressing table, and sat down to stare at herself in the mirror.

She was older, of course, older than she had ever been in Narnia, and there were crow's feet around her eyes, faint creases on her forehead, and lines around her mouth. Even her dark hair was now streaked with silver. (It was longer now, though - still not as long as she wanted it to be, but for every inch that it grew, she felt a bit more like herself.) But despite the physical evidence of her age - and the wrinkles that were the legacy of those long, hard years - there was a healthy flush to her cheeks, giving her a subtle glow that no rouge could match, and her eyes shone with a light all their own.

Gone was the confused girl still grasping for her crown, and the painted beauty who had styled herself as social royalty. Gone was the forlorn woman who had been left behind.

Now, she looked like the queen she remembered.

A prodigal queen, perhaps, but a queen just the same.

A queen who had come home at last.

And, for the first time in longer than she could remember, Susan Pevensie looked at her reflection in the mirror and smiled.

**Fin**

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A/N: The description, "a tall and gracious woman with black hair that fell almost to her feet," is taken directly from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and "I have another name. You must learn to know me by that name," is from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. All credit goes to C.S. Lewis.

Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think!

Take care and God bless!

Ani-maniac494 :)


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